Is There Any Bible Passage That Stops a Man from Having Two Wives?
1) Direct answer
Yes. The New Testament sets one man with one woman as God’s order, and it closes the door on adding another wife while the first is living.
2) Scriptural explanation
- From the beginning: “They two shall be one flesh” (Genesis 2:24; repeated by Jesus in Matthew 19:4–6; Mark 10:6–9). Notice, it’s two—one man and one woman—becoming one flesh.
- Church order and example: “Husband of one wife” is required for overseers and deacons (1 Timothy 3:2, 12; Titus 1:6). The same standard appears for widows: “wife of one man” (1 Timothy 5:9). God sets the pattern plainly.
- Purity in marriage: “To avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband” (1 Corinthians 7:2). Singular on both sides.
- Bound by the first covenant: Jesus said that marrying another while bound is adultery (Mark 10:11–12; Luke 16:18). If even a legal “putting away” doesn’t free a man to take another without guilt, taking an additional wife beside the first certainly doesn’t make it right.
- Warning against multiplying wives: God forbade kings to multiply wives (Deuteronomy 17:17), showing His displeasure with the practice.
-God allowed polygamy in the old testament because of the fall but restored back the original order in the new testament. However, those who came to Christ already married to many wives or part of a harem of wives were not forbidden from worshipping God, only they were not allowed to hold any leadership office in the church.
3) Simple clarifying logic
- God joined two to be one flesh. The Bible never says “three (or more) shall be one flesh.” You can’t be “one flesh” with several at the same time.
- If God requires leaders—the examples to the flock—to have one wife, that reveals the divine pattern for all believers.
- Jesus restored marriage to God’s original intent. Where men once tolerated arrangements, the Lord pointed back to the beginning and fixed it: one man, one woman, for life.
4) Reinforcing statement
So yes—the Scripture sets a clear stop: a believer is to have one living wife. That’s the Bible way.
Ask a Follow-up Question
What did the Laodicean Church Age (our age) Angel (- messenger) Say about this?
Ranked passages from the local William Branham sermon and Church Age Book database. Relevance is relative, not a statement of doctrinal certainty.
The god of this evil age
65-0801M §87
Her long hair, Nazarite vow, shows that she's vowed to God. Her beautiful gown of His promised Word for the age that she's living in wrapped around her, vindicating her with Himself of Hebrews 13:8: Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever. As she is a part of the Word Groom, true to Him in every point... Now look. If a woman goes out here and is married to a man, and she goes out and makes love with another man and has affairs with him, and come back to her husband, he should kick her out. Is that righ...
Hebrews, Chapter 6, part 2
57-0908E §70
Look at him sitting down there at Gerar: backslid, telling a lie, and give his wife over to another man to save his own skin. What a man! Sitting out there, and backslid. God told him, said, "Don't you leave up here. Stay up here." The famine run him out. He wandered down to where it was easier going. You know what happens to a fellow when he takes the easy road. He wandered out, down there where the grass was greener. And when he got down there, he told that king that his wife was his sister to save his own hide....
Jehovah-Jireh, part 3
62-0707 §7
I hope that every young man here, when he gets married, he'll get a wife, and you'll live as happy together as wife and I have these twenty-two years that we've been married. "He who has found a wife, has found a good thing." As Solomon said, "A good woman is a jewel in a man's crown. An unrighteous one is water in his blood." And his blood stream is his life. So, an unrighteous one is the worst thing he can get a hold of. And a righteous one is the best thing he can get a hold of, outside of salvation. If God coul...
Marriage and Divorce
65-0221M §64
You can see today why people, they say I'm a woman hater. That's far from the truth. I do not. They call me a woman hater. Remember, they called Paul a woman hater. A woman minister, not long ago, said, "Oh, you're like old Paul; all he had to do is pick on us women!" A saint of God that was permitted to write the Bible, the New Testament, and dispute his words? He said, "If a angel from heaven teaches any other thing than this that I've said, let him be accursed"---let alone some woman preacher. They said Elijah w...
Seals 5: The Third Seal
63-0320 §60
God wants His Wife pure with the Word. That's the way She must be, because nothing, "not one jot or one tittle or anything will pass from that law, from that book, until it's all fulfilled." Jesus said, "Both heavens and earth will pass away, but my Word shall never pass." Don't put any private interpretation to it. He wants the pure, unadulterated ... not even a flirt. I wouldn't want my wife flirting with some other man. And when you go to listening to any kind of reasonings beyond that, you're listening ... you'...